If you've ever wondered how to measure social media, public relations, public affairs, media relations, internal communications or blogs you're in the right spot. In this space I'll be regularly ranting and raving about measurement standards, research news, techniques and the latest developments in the world of PR research and evaluation. When I'm not here, you can find me in my garden in Durham New Hampshire or in my sailboat out on the Oyster River.

How to introduce me

For those who bear the burden of introducing me at a conference...

Katie Delahaye Paine (twitter: KDPaine) is the CEO and founder of KDPaine & Partners LLC and author of, Measuring Public Relationships, the data-driven communicators guide to measuring success. She also writes the first blog and the first newsletters dedicated entirely to measurement and accountability. In the last two decades, she and her firm have listened to millions of conversations, analyzed thousands of articles, and asked hundreds of question in order to help her clients better understand their relationships with their constituencies.
People talk, we listen..

October 28, 2006

A client recently asked me to for my take on “new Media” how
I would define it, what it meant, and how could she measure it?

My immediate flip response was: its everything that old
media isn’t. But then I started thinking. It’s not like “old media” or MSM. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the
Sunday talk shows still wield a lot of clout. Its just that now, everyone else
has a little bit of clout too.

New media is citizens covering the war in Lebanon via cell phone and YouTube.

It’s being recorded giving a speech inWichita, and knowing that the pod cast will
be available before you board your flight home.

Its bilingual, multi cultural and truly global. Its having
fans of measurement in Singapore follow your blog and invite you to speak.

It's the power of cell phones and text messaging.I

t’s the notion that you can shut
down the student riots in downtown Durham, NH by shutting down the cell
phone system because text messaging via cell phone was how the word was getting
out.

It’s being able to create the definition of PR Measurement
on Wikipedia, and then watching it evolve as more and more experts chime in

It’s you, me and every other citizen journalist sharing your
experiences – pretty and ugly – on You Tube, Shutterfly and Flikr.

It’s consumer to consumer marketing with no middle men, no
spin meisters, no corporate speak in between.

Its product placement in everything from main stream movies,
to You Tube, to blogs. It’s Loco sports,
sending their amazing running shoes to an A-list blogger, not just because they want him/her to write about them,
but because the care passionately about their product and want to share it with
the world.

Ultimately, its being who you are and seeing who is pleased, rather than
seeking approval for every word you try to publish.

And, in the end, that’s what differentiates new media from
old. In the bad old days, we wrote and published what was approved, condoned, signed
off by 40 people, white washed and spun. In the new media world, we follow our
passions. If I’m passionate about running or biking or kayaking, I Google the
topic, and find other people who share my passion. I start conversations with
them.

I happen to be passionate about PR and Marketing
Measurement, and I happen to be a breast cancer survivor. So I write about what
I believe and other people pick up on that and join in the conversation, and I
have conversations with amazing people that I would never meet if it weren’t
for this “new media”

It’s
reality TV come to every aspect of communications. Its real people, doing real
stuff, using real language to talk about it, and being heard by the real live
people that care about what your saying. It’s the
death of scream marketing and the start of a whole lot of conversations.

Is it good for business? you bet your bippy it is. Can I
measure all of it? – not yet. But I do know that business is up over 50% since I started blogging. Correlation or coincidence? You be the judge.

And you say, it's so scary, you're so vulnerable in this new world. I say yes, but we were always vulnerable and life is always scary
(just try hearing the words “you’ve got cancer” and see how you feel) and what
you realize is, it’s all relative. On a scale of one to ten, “you’ve got
cancer” is about a 9 – just shy of and closely related to “you’re going to
die.” And when you’ve heard those words, someone saying “your product sucks” is
about a 4.

Don Bartholemew has a great post on a corrollary to my oft-repeated phrase. If all you measure is media relations (primarily clip tonnage), that is how the PR profession will be valued. Read his whole post here.

Jeremy Pepper has a very good rant here from the Blog Business Summit on how everyone is talking about "community" and "conversatin" but is still applying old media techniques and thinking to new media.

October 22, 2006

My favorite statistic of the week is that, according to Salon, more Americans now believe it's possible to talk with the dead than approve of the way Republicans are running the legislative branch.

I was thinking of that as I competed in yesterday's Run, Pedal Paddle in Newcastle, NH. It's a great triathlon -- you run a 10K Through Newcastle, then bike 20 miles thru the beautiful back roads of Rye, NH. and then kayak around Newcastle Island. I did the run and the bike part and then bailed on the kayak since it was blowing 40 and there were white caps on the salt marshes! But since one of my New Year's Resolutions was to do the bike piece, I'm just happy I made it -- particularly since it was only my second time on a road bike ever!

So I was thinking of that quote, because I'm definitely not one of those that approve of congress, but I do think that the dead do speak o you. And, just as my energy started to flag yesterday, I got some very clear messages from some very dear friends who have passed on. I was doing the race in honor of my nephew Dauphinot Piper and my friend Crescentia True both of whom died earlier this year.

Just as I was struggling up a hill during the run, my friend Cormac's song "A little something" came on my mp3 player and gave me the boost to make it to the top, and I just know that it was sent to me by Crescentia. The next song was off a CD that my nephew had made for me and my feet started flying. Then, just as I was starting to really suffer during the bike race, I found myself cruising by a cemetery in Rye where some dear friends are buried, and once again, I felt my feet pedal just a little faster. Call me crazy, but at least I don' t approve of congress.

October 18, 2006

If there is one good piece of news to come out of the disgusting Edelman/Walmart affair it is this: With any luck, someone out there is measuring Walmart's reputation and realizing that fake blogs and trickery are not effective PR tactics. I know we are measuring Edelman's reputation and it's not being helped by any of this. Ultimately both organizations will only learn from their failures if they actually lose business from all of this. Sadly the chances of Walmart suffering lost sales from a kerfuffle in the blogosphere are slim to none. Nonetheless, I maintain that the what this whole affair points out is that there is a culture in certain PR agencies that anything goes as long as it gets the client "good press." That culture starts at the top, and whatever mid-level PR flack takes the blame for all this, somehow got the notion that violating WOMMA guidelines would be okay with his/her boss. The bigger issue here, is that you become what you measure, as we always say. And if you measure success based on clip books -- or whatever the blog equivalent is -- full of happy news stories -- you will do anything to generate such stories. The more column inches the better, right? Look where it got them! Instead of looking at clip books, they should be looking at relationship measures like trust, integrity, honesty etc. Both Edelman and Walmart might learn something by doing some real research on what a lack of transparency and blatant media manipulation does to ones trust index. But that takes too much time effort and energy, apparently.

I'm thinking that us data-driven, accountable communictors and Measurement Mavens of the world really need a good t-shirt -- we were brainstorming a bit the other night (yes, there was alcohol involved) but we came up with the following, and I was hoping for more suggestions. 1. Unlike the President, I'm accountable2. When we say "Mission Accomplished" we can actually prove it3. Outputs, outtakes, outcomes --who gives a s__t as long as we get the credit4. I have a ruler and I know how to use it 5. Measure this!

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Measure What Matters

Katie Delahaye Paine's great little book Measure What Matters shows organizations of all sizes how to evaluate and improve their public relations and social media efforts. OrderMeasure What Matters now.